Repeat offenders are escaping court because police just hand out a string of
on-the-spot fines for easy convictions, magistrates' head John Thornhill has
warned.

In one case a thief was given 12 separate fixed penalties for shoplifting instead of being taken to court despite being a persistent criminal, Mr Thornhill, the chairman of the Magistrates’ Association disclosed.

And serious offenders are also escaping tougher penalties after a suspect caught in possession of a firearm was given a fine, even though he was on bail from court for the same offence.

The alarming trend emerged after The Daily Telegraph disclosed magistrates do not believe the police can be trusted to hand out summary justice.

Mr Thornhill said more than half of all criminal matters are dealt with out of court, such as fines, cautions and formal warnings, but half of all on the spot fines are not paid on time and end up in court anyway.

He said: "We have been investigating the use of out of court disposals, on-the-spot-fines for the last 12 months, and the evidence we have suggests that on many occasions, where the matter is serious police go for the easy option of the on-the-spot fine, because it's done and dusted, dealt with there and then.

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"And many of the police actually don't want to do this, because they believe it's more important that an independent tribunal which is not fettered by financial considerations or targets makes that decision."

In an extraordinary attack, the Magistrates’ Association said earlier that it is a “certainty” that officers will misuse powers because they cannot be “relied on” to handle them appropriately.

The comments were made as part of the Magistrates’ Association response to the Government’s plans to allow police to issue £60 fixed penalties for careless driving.

Police have been accused of increasingly dealing with offences using on-the-spot fines as an easy way to hit the government’s crime targets.

Magistrates are worried that the number of offences now dealt with in this way is keeping some serious offenders out of the courts.

However, police leaders insisted that the use of the fines, which has risen sharply under Labour, helped to reduce paperwork and free up officers’ time.

It leaves two of the key bodies responsible for tackling crime and administering justice at loggerheads.

Hundreds of thousands of fixed penalties are handed out by police every year, including almost 1.5 million for speeding offences alone.

Police have been given increasing powers to hand out fines since Labour took power in 1997, mainly through the introduction of the penalty notice for disorder in 2004.

The fines can be handed out for so-called “low-level” offending such as littering, criminal damage, being drunk and disorderly and shoplifting.

The number of such fines has increased more than three-fold from 63,639 in 2004 to 207,544 in 2007, the most recent figures available.